BiographyAki Kaurismäki, born in 1957, grew up in “the age terrorized by television,” and has tried and managed to stick totally to the inseparable realities of the real world and the “deep screen” that only 35mm film – light against the electronic machinations, the beauty of artisan tradition against technological overkill – makes possible. He never used any other material, least of all video, and he is simply very proud for having joined in the continuity and tradition of “real cinema.” His minimalist style is all his own (and that of the great cinematographer of all his films, Timo Salminen); he never entered the Finnish Film School (as he was suspected of being “too cynical”). At the same time his films are full of quotations (he claims Juhamust have more than a hundred), but always invisible, a part of a constant dialogue where particles of film culture reveal realities of the human environment, society and psyche as it is now, and as it was during the tender years of Aki’s childhood; only vaguely known to foreign spectators, there is always an overwhelming presence of Finnish typicalities, “objects of love” and references to well-known sources of Finnish literary evergreens, painting or of course popular music (or our beloved films).

Aki Kaurismäki

Le Havre / Aki Kaurismäki

Marcel Marx, a former author and a well-known Bohemian, has retreated into a voluntary exile in the port city of Le Havre, where he feels he has reached a closer rapport with the people, serving them in the honourable, but not too profitable, occupation of a shoeshine man. He has buried his dreams of a literary breakthrough and lives happily within the triangle of his favourite bar, his work, and his wife Arletty, when fate suddenly throws in his path an underage immigrant refugee from the darkest Africa. As Arletty falls seriously ill and is bedridden, Marcel once again has to rise against the cold wall of human indifference with his only weapon his innate optimism and the unwavering solidarity of the people of his neighborhood. But against him stands the whole blind machinery of the Western, constitutionally governed state, this time represented by the dragnet of the police, drawing closer around the refugee boy. It’s time for Marcel to polish his shoes and reveal his teeth.